Progress Report: "Little Portraits"

It was a good night for painting last night.

First up, Mr. Roboto.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Bad photo aside (the before is an awful shot) it's getting harder and harder to see the changes as I make them.  They're all subtle tweaks to the shading and whatnot, so they don't translate well via photos (especially my crappy cellphone pics).

Last night I worked on Mr. Roboto's antenna, mouth, eye, and some shading on the background (making it darker).  OH, I also shaved down his one shoulder which I really like.  I'm tempted to shave down the other one but it really is that pointed in the photo so. . .

Next up, Priscilla.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Again, ignore how crappy the photos are (especially the "before"--the lighting is so awful on that).  I didn't spend as much time on Priscilla last night, so not as much was done.  The big change is in the size of the eye patch.  I was wondering why it just looked so off from the rest of the painting.  While I realize the entire painting is "weird" (hello? cat with an eye patch!) but the eye patch itself just really stuck out as not working with the rest of the image.  Yes, it's not exactly true to the original image (my version's face isn't as low and wide) and while discussing the funky eye patch issue with the instructor, he mentions how the shape of the painted eye patch didn't look like it would fit over the existing eye.  So that could be why the eye patch was standing out so much and wasn't working.  The minute I widened it just a bit, it started to look more and more like it belongs.  Once I get it colored properly (fix the stripes so the new bit matches the existing part) and then shade it up, it should be good.  Yes, it's still very different from the photo (one big thing is, in the photo you can see the black fabric around the edge of the pink--I edited that out for the painting) but it will work for the painting (which has a host of small issues that make it far from an exact rendering of the photo).

So why did I have so little time with Priscilla?  Because I started the third canvas in this collection.  I think this third one will be the last in the set.

Here's where working with such small canvases becomes a trick.  You get them covered fairly quickly then have to find something else to do while they dry.

Hopefully that mess up there will slowly morph into a version of this:

Of course, the size isn't the same so the photo was cropped a bit to fit the canvas.

I was going to do another robot and cat but I'm bored with that now.  The I toyed with doing paintings of T.P. Day and Mr. Durr but they have such muted colors and I'm about burned out on dark shades for now (so much gray and black lately!) that I needed a pop of color.  Clark/Super Worm definitely has that.  I'm not sure what the background color will ultimately become, but for now I liked the blue/gray shade so why not fill it in that way and work from there.  It's something different for my.  Normally I'm very methodical and don't like to put down multiple layers of paint.  Like normally I'd leave the mask/eye area and fill it in with only the "right" colors but this time I just greened out the whole head area and I'll build on it with the "right" colors.  No need to be so uptight when I'm working with such a small canvas.  There will be time for that later.